


We Both Can Pretend

by Brrng



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Somewhat canon-compliant, lying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 11:24:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4604898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brrng/pseuds/Brrng
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are Rose Lalonde and all of your friends are dead.</p><p>In which the kids, beta and alpha, humans and trolls alike, manage to beat the game, but when Rose steps through the doorway she is the only one there. Rose, the last girl standing after a game that ruined and made worlds; Rose, who remembers and forgets, lies and hurts, and will find herself again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Both Can Pretend

**Author's Note:**

> _[As the sad-eyed woman spoke we missed our chance,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWYUnXlnvYo/) _   
>  _[The final dying joke caught in our hands](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWYUnXlnvYo/) _   
>  _[And the rugged wheel is turning another round](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWYUnXlnvYo/) _   
>    
>  _Dorian - Agnes Obel_
> 
>  
> 
> What would it be like if the game only allowed one person to survive, whether it be by design or chance?

_We've won_ , you think. _It's over_. You turn to your friends and you grab their hands and, laughing like you haven't in ages, you step through the doorway and into your future. You are 17 years old and you have seen so much, done so much more than any 17-year-old should ever do or see.

You step through the doorway and you wake up in an alleyway in a city you can't put a name to.

It's an unremarkable little alleyway. You wonder if this is what heaven is and then quickly dismiss the thought; you feel very much alive, but you are very much confused. This is not the meteor. This is not what you were supposed to find after winning.

With shaking hands, you run your fingers across your face and your hair and then over your body, touching the fabric of your sweater and your skirt. You try not to tremble and your body does not listen; you are not wearing boots, but you are quaking. 

You glance down, your breath starting to come in quick bursts, and you see items you recognize as your own. Several books of various sizes, a pair of knitting needles, and your computer, nestled amongst other things of yours. A bright blue headband - from your god tier clothing, you think - lies on one of the books, almost shining in the faint sunlight, and you pick it up and place it on your head, smoothing out your hair as you go. Once it's on, you feel a little better, somewhat more like yourself. 

You slowly pick up your possessions and walk out of the alley and down a path that seems familiar, although you've never been in this city before. You think you'd remember - the city's all bright lights, neon signs and flashing billboards on top of tall buildings, so different from the place you grew up. Something in your gut clenches and releases and you walk. 

The people around you are loud, constantly chattering to each other and walking in a tight, fast-paced manner that says 'I have places to be, get out of my way'. Numbly, you acquiesce to their unspoken demands; you walk quickly past them and let your feet guide you to the steps of an apartment building. 

You gaze up at the building and ever so slowly, you reach down into your armful of possessions and you remove a keyring from the stack. You unlock the door to the building and slip inside, closing it behind you, and you hurry up the stairs until you stand in front of one of the gray-painted doors. Your keys unlock that door, too, and you trip over yourself as you enter, nearly dropping everything on the floor in your haste. 

You lock the door behind you and set your things down carefully before looking around the apartment. It's furnished, you note, and something tells you that you were the one who furnished it - perhaps it's in the way the lone armchair is angled, the way stacks of books are organized on a matching set of tall black bookshelves. Which is impossible, since… since… since you weren't even on this planet for the last four years of your life. 

You slip off your shoes and step further into the apartment, into a little kitchen area. You tug open the fridge and peer inside, eyes widening as you see the fully-stocked contents. You pick up a gallon jug of milk and smooth the label over with your fingers; the 'best by' date isn't for another week or so. The vegetable drawer is filled with leafy greens and several large red peppers, all fresh and new, and a package of strawberries on a shelf are red and ripe. 

Slowly, you close the refrigerator, taking a few steps out of the kitchen before spotting a door in the wall to your right. You glance between the front door and this new one, then step towards it and let it swing open fully before you enter. 

It's a bedroom. It's your bedroom. The bed in the middle isn't exactly your bed, but the comforter is in that particular shade of purple you've adopted as your own and the messiness of the floor attests to the fact that it is, in fact, one Rose Lalonde that inhabits this space. 

Biting your lip, you turn around and face the entrance, walking towards it but ignoring the open door in favor of opening another one, just off to the side. This one is a bathroom, and you pick up the shampoo bottles in the shower - vanilla-scented, your favorite - before setting them back down, as gentle as if they were newborns. 

You turn and freeze as you catch sight of yourself in the mirror. You look older. You'd already started losing the last of your baby fat when you'd left the meteor and won the game and your reflection shows that it's fully gone; your cheekbones are more prominent and the circles under your eyes are as dark as the night sky. You lean forwards and turn your face this way and that, trying to get a better angle. 

You're wearing makeup. Your eyeliner is precise and sharp, the faintest traces of eyeshadow are visible when you close one eye, and your lips are painted in their usual black shade. You look surprisingly normal.

You frown and sigh, resting your hands against the countertop.

"Am I real?" you muse, speaking your thoughts aloud. "Or is this a strange occurrence in the dreambubbles? Ah, but that can't be it; the bubbles are more for memories, and this place…" You trail off and your face twists in the sudden realization that you are alone.

You dash back into the main room - the living room, you'd think, if you were paying more attention - and grab your computer, hurriedly sitting down cross-legged on the floor and turning it on. You sign in, first to the computer and then to your Pesterchum account, biting your lip and anxiously waiting for your chumroll to load. 

When it does, you don't move. You simply stare, shocked, and with watery eyes you push the laptop away from you with a force no electronic device deserves. 

The chumroll doesn't disappear from your screen and it doesn't update, either. Every handle that was ever there, Dave's and Jade's and John's, Roxy's and Kanaya's and all the others; all the handles that once adorned your screen with their bright colors are gone. Your chumroll lies empty and for the first time in a long while, you curl up on yourself and admit that you're scared.

\-----

Days pass. For the most part, they are uneventful.

On day one, you put most of your belongings in the closet and hide in the - in _your_ bedroom until the sun disappears behind the tallest of the buildings. You cry yourself to sleep and wake up with a stained pillowcase and a headache. 

On day two, you receive an email from someone you don't know, telling you that they missed you at work yesterday and would you be coming in today; you consider ignoring them, but instead you make up some excuse about feeling under the weather. 

On day three, you find yourself standing outside of a library. You enter as though the library were an entrance to another world and a woman behind the counter greets you enthusiastically; she asks if you're feeling better and you smile at her and say, _probably_. She laughs as if you told a great joke and ushers you into a back room where she sets you to sorting out returned books. 

On days four through ten, you fall into a routine. Wake up, make breakfast, go to the library. Come home precisely at 6 P.M. and make dinner, then read a book until 10. Some days you mix it up and nearly have a mental breakdown in the kitchen while the stove's running. 

You learn that the woman behind the library counter is Alison; she is 42 years old with no children. She smiles at everyone and doesn't mind that you seem out of sorts at first - instead, she emails you your work schedule and recipes for casserole. You become accustomed to this life and you try not to think too hard about what's going on.

\-----

After half a year, you hold funerals, one for each of your friends. You're not sure where they are. You've scoured phonebooks and the internet and not a single trace of them has magically appeared, making you doubt their existence and, in rare cases, your mind. You really shouldn't; you have proof that they were real, once, locked up in your memory and in the things that you found when you woke up in this city.

Even possibly-fake friends could use a funeral, however, and you hold them in a small park near your apartment. There are no eulogies, no shed tears. There is just you, holding a long set of funerals for friends you can remember but cannot find, and you return to your apartment and try to forget. 

This should be closure, you think, staring up at your bedroom ceiling. You should feel better about this. 

(You don't.)

\-----

Years pass. You are 21, 22, and 23; Alison throws you a birthday party every year, but with only two of you there, it's lackluster.

\-----

At 23, you feel as though you've gone grimdark once again. That same hollow feeling sets up shop in your insides, making you restless and slowly sucking away your emotions. You wonder if you're depressed. You wonder if you're real. 

You forget and you remember and you try to remain standing in this sea of confusion.

\-----

There is something uneventful about forgetting and remembering, you've learned. 

You've forgotten so many things. The way it felt to be held, your 5-year-old self's imaginary friends, the striking and always-present heat of the desert. You've forgotten the taste of salt on the air as you walk alongside the ocean, curling waves and small pools of blue dotting the sand. You've forgotten how nice it is to wake up in the morning to light streaming in through your windows, light from suns both yellow and green. (The sun still exists, of course, but the light is unwelcome now.)

You had far too much light in your life, those past few years, but now that it's gone you find that you miss it.

Of course, with the forgetting comes the remembering. In some small, dark corner of yourself, you would freely admit that the remembering is often the worst part. In some corner of yourself you would say that it hurts, almost, but not the same kind of hurt as it is to be betrayed or to fall in love; not the same as the feeling of bumping your funny bone on the hard surface of a table, not the same as it is to get a tattoo.

This is a part of you, you have decided, that should not be allowed to surface. Instead of honesty and instead of feeling, you build a persona, slowly, surely. 

Lies dance upon your tongue and they spill out from between your black-painted lips with practiced ease, little white things, at first. You told the woman at the local diner that she looked lovely when you wanted to scream sharp, hurtful words, the kind that dig deep and sting for days. The children playing on the street in front of you apartment became _darlings_ and you smiled at their cooing mothers; as you watched them from your window, afternoon light casting shadows on the asphalt, one small boy ran too far too fast. He slipped and he fell and he sat there, on the black road, staring at his skinned knees and the palms of his hands in disbelief. You closed the blinds as the first signs of tears showed in his eyes, but you could not close your ears when his baby-loud sobs reached your living room. 

The man at the counter of the 24/7 drugstore becomes 'charming' and 'witty'. You laugh, softly, as he fumbles your purchases into white plastic bags and you don't comment on the way his eyes dart about. You pretend you do not notice the way he looks around, watching all the people as they enter and leave and purchase and search. You will not think about how sad he looked, as if he couldn't quite reach out to others, falling short of the mark each time he ventured to leave the safety of the cash register. 

You don't correct the teenagers in the park when they say that they think they know you, hey, won't you come hang with them for a while? Part of you wants to accept their offer and see exactly what constitutes as 'hanging out' for today's youth; the rest of you screams out in righteous fury and the crook of your elbow, where one foolish boy grabbed onto your arm, burns. You smile, too-wide and with too many teeth, and politely refuse. You turn away from them and walk in a straight line as only you know how; you walk in a straight line and you call upon every bone in your body, every fiber of your being to cooperate. You walk away with all the force of a girl who grew up too quickly, with all the grace and all the power of a woman who knows too much and says absolutely nothing.

Twenty-somethings line the streets and sway in time to music in seedy bars and you blend in. You feel crowded in these places, still unused to so many people after a lifetime spent lonely and distant, even after your time on the meteor. You mask it well, with precise, timed movements and just the right amount of flirting; your drinks are always free when you go out.

Your lies are small and they feel as light as feathers in your palms. Some part of you understands that your lies aren't so much lies as they are average, run-of-the-mill politeness. Some part of you understands that this politeness is, in and of itself, a lie. When thoughts like these cross your mind, you smile in a grim sort of way and remind yourself that everything is so much better when you aren't yourself. Part of you is tempted to try substance abuse again, but you remember how poorly it went last time. So instead of alcoholism and honesty, you lie and you become someone you aren't.

\-----

Alison walks into the bookstore one day and announces that she's hiring several more employees. "The library's always been busy," she says, beaming at you. "With just you and me, I'm starting to feel a bit overworked!"

The next day there are five people standing in a half circle outside the library doors. They introduce themselves as Eric, Daniel, Catherine, Maddie, and Ryan; they introduce themselves as college students looking for part-time work. Your smile is thin but they accept it as sincere and you invite them inside. You offer to show them the ropes. They accept readily enough, you suppose; at least with you around, they'll be hard-pressed to find ways to slack off.

Maddie and Ryan quit a few weeks later. Maddie's moving away to Florida, Alison tells you sadly. Something about her family. Ryan's not cut out for the library; he's going to try working at a coffee shop down the street. You nod your head, because that is what Alison expects you to do, and you go to their going-away party and you wish them well.

\-----

As the days pass and become weeks and then months, your little white lies become darker and heavier. You create online dating profiles, first on a whim and then out of habit, making up different people to become. To some, you are Jessica Lange, a world-weary barista with a passion for old black-and-white romantic comedies. To others you are Helen Ballard, a painter and single mother of two. 

You are Erin, and Tanya, and Stella, and Rebecca. You are a herpetologist, a poet, a fast-food worker; you are 28, and 23, and 31. You love documentaries, and biking, and you practice the clarinet in those few minutes between dusk and night, chorales and etudes and the last few notes of symphonies sounding in the still air until they fade away, leaving with the sun. 

You are never Jade, never Jane, never, never. You never enjoy fashion or cooking, you are strictly sober, you are frightened of the water. You do not enjoy death and the bones of dead creatures, their corpses in jars that line the walls - they are things that you detest. The sound of a piano causes tears to form in the corners of your eyes; someone asked you, once, if you were okay. You smiled and you nodded, agreeable, pleasant. You smiled and you said that it was just so - touching. So moving. You do not say that the last time you heard piano playing that lovely it was at a funeral for a boy with eyes like the sea. You do not say that the funeral was attended by one, you do not say that the piano was only a memory of a time when those sea-blue eyes looked at you and sparkled; you say nothing and you pick up your purse and you leave.

\-----

You walk home, that day, with the sounds of piano music ringing in your ears like the lyrics to a catchy song from the radio. You don't bother with the bus. The bus, you see, would pick you up and drop you off in one swift motion, a direct ride to home and to sadness. Instead, you walk, watching your reflection in the windows of small shops, and you unlock your apartment with shaky hands as the sun sets. 

Sometimes, when you are you home, you sit in you large, cozy armchair, sipping tea and watching the television. Sometimes you sit at your desk and the sounds of your fingers click-clacking against the keys go on well into the night. Other times, you attach your phone to a pair of speakers on your kitchen counter and you make simple meals for yourself, singing along to songs in foreign tongues. 

When you enter your apartment, you do not do any of those things. You set your keys and your purse down in your bedroom and slowly, slowly, you sink to the floor. You press your face into your hands and make a sound akin to choking. 

For the first time in three years, you cry. 

The tears come far quicker than you would have thought, streaming down your face and leaving wet trails on your cheeks. You're sure that some of your mascara has run - between sobs, you wipe at your eyes, trying to erase the signs that your lashes were ever anything but pale blonde strands. 

Slowly, the tears stop coming, but you don't move. You sit, curled on the floor with your back pressed against the foot of your bed, and you watch the shadows dance across the wall. Somewhere in the back of your mind, you think about making dinner, perhaps turning on a movie to distract yourself. You bite at your lips and will your limbs to move, to give even the barest signs of life; they do not obey you and remain limp at your sides, remain tucked underneath you. 

You sit there for - hours, maybe. It doesn't really matter, because by the time you manage to stand and remain upright, the shadows have long since turned to a black fog, making it difficult to see. A few stray flickers of light are just barely visible from behind your blinds, and you push them aside and peer out into the inky blackness. The source of the light draws your eyes and you watch an electronic billboard switching between ads at a rapid-fire pace. _Buy Coca-Cola_ , they say, _Go the cinema and watch the movies. Get a gym membership. Go to Applebee's_.

You allow the blinds to fall back into place but you remain standing there for a few quiet moments. You turn away, reluctant, pausing to peel off your high heels, leaving them on the floor as you push open your bedroom door. Your toes feel for where the carpet gives way to cool tile and you shiver as you find it, reaching out in front of you to where the light switch is on the wall. 

The light that fills the apartment is soft and white, easier on the eyes than the dim yellow you'd associated with lamplight in your earlier years. You blink, peering around the apartment, and you sigh, the barest exhalation of breath. 

You're tempted to put yourself together, to clean yourself up and have a meal and fall asleep in your bed, tucked underneath a comforter in one of the few colors without painful memories attached to it. You're just as tempted to go back into your bedroom and slip back into your heels, exchange your blouse and skirt for something infinitely tighter and darker and infinitely more impractical. You're tempted to take your heels and your impracticality and leave, prowling the streets and getting drunk in clubs you'll never learn the name of. 

You do neither. Instead, you grab a package of saltines and retreat to your room, switching off the lights as you leave and feeling your way around the darkened space. You sit on your bed, legs hanging off the side and feet swinging, just barely, and you stare at the window and the flickering lights behind it as you eat.

When the last of the package is gone, you set the plastic wrapping down on the floor and you brush the crumbs off of your bedspread and you curl up in your practical clothing and your sadness and you sleep. You do not dream.

\-----

Waking up proves difficult, and when you manage to clear away the heaviness of sleep you find that it is long past morning. You don't move, just yet, and you lie in your bed and you look at nothing in particular. It takes a while before you find the strength to get up and enter the bathroom, changing into a soft shirt and pajama pants, tossing your empty saltines wrapper into the trash and wiping the smeared makeup from your face. You brush out your hair and set the brush down next to the sink, staring at your reflection. 

Pale blond locks twist around your face and you meet your own gaze, one set of purple eyes warily watching another. You run your finger along your nose, bridge to tip, and you trace the outline of your lips and the fine lines of your cheekbones. You try to smile at yourself and immediately regret it, choosing instead to stare impassively. Smiling like that doesn't come very naturally to you anymore. 

You leave the bathroom and enter the kitchen, filling your teakettle with water and setting it on the stove. Minutes pass and the kettle's whistling shakes you from thoughts of the sky and of stars and of worn paths. You fill a mug with hot water and a teabag - you don't bother to see what kind - and sip it before it has a chance to cool. You burn your tongue but you press on, uncaring. 

You take your mug and settle down into your chair, leaning back against the plush softness and resting your elbows on your thighs. You sip at your tea and you brood over your thoughts as the light begins to fade down to a comfortable orange glow. 

Your cup is rinsed and the teabag thrown out and you take a deep breath before you reenter your bedroom. Slowly, nervously, you walk to your closet and you push the mirrored sliding door aside, stepping forwards and going up onto the tips of your toes as you reach for an old, worn book bound in brown leather. 

You pull the book down from its place on the top shelf and simply hold it in your hands for a moment before taking a few steps backwards, until the backs of your knees hit the softness of your bed and you sit. The book rests in your lap and you brush off the dust that's gathered from years of sitting, untouched. You run your fingers across the cover and down the spine and, shakily, you open it. 

The first page is plain and simple. The word 'Scrapbook' is written in plain black lettering - your handwriting, you know. You tried to forget that - you know that, too. You didn't want to remember anything about this book. But you do. You take a deep breath and turn the page. 

Pictures are carefully glued to the pages - two sets of four children each, grinning at the camera; a large, green, glowing orb surrounded by space and stars; a girl staring candidly at her hands, twisting in her lap, seemingly unaware that she is the subject of a photograph. Next to them are written, in the same lettering as before: 'John, Jade, Dave, Rose'; 'Jane, Jake, Dirk, Roxy'; 'The Green Sun'; 'Kanaya'. 

You bite your lip and flip through the book, page after page of pictures of humans and trolls and space. You find a few flowers pressed between two pages; the torn-off label to a can between two more. Written in the margins are little notes, not all in your handwriting. 

' _yo check this out_ ', followed by a rap written in brilliant red ink; ' _the flowers are from LOFAF! they might be marigolds? it took forever to find them in all the snow!_ '; ' _This Was Taken Quite Expertly. My Compliments To The Photographer_ '.

You feel the beginnings of tears forming in the corners of your eyes and hurriedly wipe them away before they fall and stain the pages. 

You flip through the book, staring at pictures and words and little mementos tucked between the pages. Pictures of the trolls, of you, of your friends - you run your fingers down the pages, tracing faces and mouthing the words written beside each picture. 'Terezi and Vriska, new moirails' reads one; 'movie night!' reads another, and you nearly smile as you see the picture it's written beside - Karkat, clutching a pillow to his chest, and Jade standing behind him making faces at the camera.

One page in particular catches your attention and you pause. 'selfie w/ mom' reads the caption in bright pink; the picture itself takes up nearly the entire page, covering the faintly brown paper with the faces of two teenage girls, hugging each other tightly and grinning at the camera. Roxy's face is lit up and your own looks so… happy. You look happy. You're not sure how long it's been since you last remember looking that way, let alone feeling anything but emptiness.

It doesn't take too long before you've reached the end of the book. You close it, slowly, pushing the flowers back into place as you go so that they don't stick out where they could get crushed in a careless movement. 

You sit there for a long while, quietly; only your fingers move, tracing patterns into the binding of the book. Eventually, you stand, but you don't move towards the closet to put the book back in its place; instead, you place the book on a shelf in the corner of your room. 

"I'm sorry," you whisper, slowly taking your hands away. "I - there truly is no possible way for you to know how much I miss all of you so very, very much. And yet…" 

You trail off, smiling slightly, just the barest upturn of your lips. "I think I needed this," you say softly. "Putting it off didn't do me any good."

With one last glance towards the book, you move out towards the living room and your computer, pausing slightly as you remember that you didn't have work today. There's no need for you to tell Alison where you were.

You continue to the computer anyways. You think it's about time to delete those online profiles, to stop trying to remake yourself into something you aren't. By the time you're done - and there are quite a lot of them - the sun will be starting its descent. You'll make popcorn, you decide, and you'll treat yourself to a movie.

Closure, you decide, sitting down in your chair and opening your laptop, is not a thing that you should have put off for this long.

**Author's Note:**

> What-if questions and great music are a catch-all cure to writer's block, it seems.


End file.
